Hobbes (1651, 1985), Thomas, Leviathan: The Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil, Penguin Classics 1985 ' Written during the turmoil of the English Civil War, Leviathan is an ambitious and highly original work of political philosophy. Claiming that man's essential nature is competitive and selfish, Hobbes formulates the case for a powerful sovereign—or "Leviathan"—to enforce peace and the law, substituting security for the anarchic freedom he believed human beings would otherwise experience. This worldview shocked many of Hobbes's contemporaries, and his work was publicly burnt for sedition and blasphemy when it was first published. But in his rejection of Aristotle's view of man as a naturally social being, and in his painstaking analysis of the ways in which society can and should function, Hobbes opened up a whole new world of political science. Based on the original 1651 text, this edition incorporates Hobbes's own corrections, while also retaining the original spelling and punctuation, to read with vividness and clarity. C. B. Macpherson's introduction elucidates one of the most fascinating works of modern philosophy for the general reader.' 
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Lovelock (1995), James, Ages of Gaia: A Biography of our Living Earth, W W Norton 1995 'This book describes a set of observations about the life of our planet which may, one day, be recognised as one of the major discontinuities in human thought. If Lovelock turns out to be right in his view of things, as I believe he is, we will be viewing the Earth as a coherent system of life, self regulating and self-changing, a sort of immense living organism.' Lewis Thomas 
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Zwicky (1969), Fritz, Discovery, Invention, Research Through the Morphological Approach, The Macmillan Company 1969 ' He also developed what he called the "morphological" approach to problem analysis. In essence, it decomposes a problem into multiple discrete-value dimensions. Then, using "systematic field coverage," the approach examines each distinct combination of values. He uses transformation of energy from one kind to another as an example. After identifying ten kinds of energy, he uses input as one axis and output as the other, creating a two-dimensional grid of one hundred input/output combinations. It still works well for relatively small, simple problems not subject to combinatorial explosions (the "curse of dimensionality") or to continuous values along any axis. It also lies at the core of modern genetic algorithms that optimize over search spaces too large for exhaustive analysis.' 
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Anthony Annett, After Neoliberalism: ‘Bidenomics,’ explained, ' President Obama’s crowning economic achievement was the recovery from the global financial crisis—at the time the sharpest downturn since the Great Depression. But Obama relied far too heavily on the neoliberal playbook. . . . As a result, more than 9 million families lost their homes. Unemployment stayed too high for too long. Peaking at 10 percent of the labor force at the end of 2009, it took until the latter half of 2015 to fall to 5 percent. And 95 percent of the income gains in the three years after the financial crisis went to the top 1 percent. The extent of the problem was laid bare by economists Atif Mian and Amir Sufi in their book, House of Debt. They showed that the real problem was less financial fragility than excessive household debt, which held back spending and led to job losses. . . . ' But things have begun to change. In his approach to economic policy, President Biden has broken with the neoliberal paradigm in substantial ways. A distinctive “Bidenonomics” can be recognized in five different areas: Keynesian demand management, pro-family social policy, infrastructure spending, industrial policy, and actions to push the energy transition.' back

Appeasement - Wikipedia, Appeasement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, back

Blakers, Nadolny & Stocks, Batteries of gravity and water: we found 1,500 new pumped hydro sites next to existing reservoirs, ' Pumped hydro doesn’t have to be on a river at all. None of the 5,500 potential greenfield or bluefield sites we’ve identified require new dams on major rivers. What about resource use? Pumped hydro is a resource miser. Water? For a 100% renewable grid, we’d need about three litres of water per person per day to fill the reservoir and offset evaporation. That’s about 20 seconds of your morning shower. Once full, the water can be used and reused for 50 years or more, with only top-ups to offset evaporation. Land? About three square metres of land per person would have to be submerged – the area of a double bed. Two decades ago, people worried we’d have to invent new technologies to decarbonise. But the resurgence of pumped hydro suggests this fear was misguided. Older, proven technologies can do the job just fine. back

Christoher Callahan & Justin Mankin, Globally unequal effect of extreme heat on economic growth, ' Abstract Increased extreme heat is among the clearest impacts of global warming, but the economic effects of heat waves are poorly understood. Using subnational economic data, extreme heat metrics measuring the temperature of the hottest several days in each year, and an ensemble of climate models, we quantify the effect of extreme heat intensity on economic growth globally. We find that human-caused increases in heat waves have depressed economic output most in the poor tropical regions least culpable for warming. Cumulative 1992–2013 losses from anthropogenic extreme heat likely fall between $5 trillion and $29.3 trillion globally. Losses amount to 6.7% of Gross Domestic Product per capita per year for regions in the bottom income decile, but only 1.5% for regions in the top income decile. Our results have the potential to inform adaptation investments and demonstrate how global inequality is both a cause and consequence of the unequal burden of climate change.' back

Clive Hamilton, Ross Garnaut thinks Australia can become a low-carbon superpower: Clive Hamilton is not convinced, ' When we turn the page to Chapter 2, however, we step out of the warm bath of hopeful possibilities and into a cold shower of real emissions trajectories. A chapter written by Malte Meinshausen – perhaps Australia’s leading authority on budgets and pathways – and his colleagues Zebedee Nicholls, Rebecca Burden and Jared Lewis crunches the numbers on the world’s and Australia’s permissible carbon budgets. It sets out to answer the question: “Will the transition be swift enough to avoid catastrophic climate outcomes?” The authors don’t say it explicitly, but the message is pretty clear. Australia will not cut its emissions deeply enough and quickly enough to make its fair contribution to the global goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C.' back

David Freelander, Drinking Enemies: Two Cocktail Parties that Reveal the Schism in the Millennial Left , ' Progressives, in other words, have won battle after battle for the soul of the Democratic Party. But instead of consolidating their gains and taking the fight to the Republicans, they keep waging war, McElwee says, with their own side. “The left doesn’t know how to win with dignity and grace. Do you know how many cryptocommunists are now working for the Biden administration? How many former Bernie Sanders staffers who are pretty f---ing deep in the White House’s policy nexus? The revolutionary socialist phase has kind of faded for the left,” said McElwee. “But the flip side of that is that a lot of those people have infiltrated to the highest levels of Democratic politics.”.' back

Einstein Symposium Jerusalem 1979, The Jerusalem Einstein Centennial Symposium, back

Greg Sargeant, Opinion: The Trump-DeSantis feud just got worse. A hidden factor is driving it., ' Sarah Posner: Trump knows that his base believes God anointed him to lead America at a critical juncture, and that many of them believe him to be a messianic figure who alone can rescue America from what they call demonic forces (liberalism, civil rights, “deep state,” and more). None of Trump’s potential rivals have so blatantly tried to claim that divine blessing. It’s a very dangerous sign that DeSantis is reading the base — which has been bombarded with ever more radical claims of anointings, prophecy and spiritual warfare against the left — as receptive to savior alternatives to Trump. . . . I am talking about Trump’s core base of White evangelicals and other right-wing Christians — broadly described as Christian nationalists — who believe America was founded as a Christian nation and it is their duty to take it back from what they claim are anti-Christian forces who have undermined its Christian heritage. . . . . DeSantis is definitely setting himself up to be Trump’s most viable rival by positioning himself as the next anointed leader who will take on the left by using state power to fight these battles. This could give him a real chance of cutting into Trump’s support.' back

Haartz Editorial (2022_11_10), By Air, Land and Sea, ' More than once, Gazan fishermen have been shot for no fault of their own and their boats confiscated. According to the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, during the first 10 months of the year, there were more than 400 incidents of violence against Gazan fishermen by the Israel Navy, some of which involved gunfire. Nineteen boats were confiscated and 54 fishermen were arrested – an increase of 350 percent over the number arrested last year. Now the fishermen are also being barred from selling their wares to their compatriots in the West Bank.' back

Heidi Ledford, CRISPR cancer trial success paves the way for personalized treatments, ' A small clinical trial has shown that researchers can use CRISPR gene editing to alter immune cells so that they will recognize mutated proteins specific to a person’s tumours. Those cells can then be safely set loose in the body to find and destroy their target. It is the first attempt to combine two hot areas in cancer research: gene editing to create personalized treatments, and engineering immune cells called T cells so as to better target tumours. The approach was tested in 16 people with solid tumours, including in the breast and colon. “It is probably the most complicated therapy ever attempted in the clinic,” says study co-author Antoni Ribas, a cancer researcher and physician at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We’re trying to make an army out of a patient’s own T cells.” The results were published in Nature1 and presented at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer meeting in Boston, Massachusetts on 10 November.' back

Jahan, Mahmud & Papageorgiou, What Is Keynesian Economics?, ' British economist John Maynard Keynes spearheaded a revolution in economic thinking that overturned the then-prevailing idea that free markets would automatically provide full employment—that is, that everyone who wanted a job would have one as long as workers were flexible in their wage demands (see box). The main plank of Keynes’s theory, which has come to bear his name, is the assertion that aggregate demand—measured as the sum of spending by households, businesses, and the government—is the most important driving force in an economy.' back

Jeffrey Nicholls (1992a), An essay on value, ' 1 We must kill to live. The question before is is whether or not to kill some fraction of the old growth forest (OGF) in the Wingham management area (WMA) in order to keep the sawmilling operation at Mt George alive. Religion 2 Although the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), as we have it, is a document based largely on resource, commercial and employment considerations, I believe the Commission is facing a religious issue, and will have no peace until it realizes that fact. 3 Matters of life and death are questions of religion. For those who have power over life and death, deciding what to kill is a question of value. The value system of any organism is determined by the history of its survival. 4 If the decision is good, the benefit from killing will exceed the value of what is destroyed, yielding a profit and enhanced probability of survival. A wrong judgment of value leads to the opposite result.' back

Kevin McSpadden, ‘A window into perspective’- How three European missionaries viewed the fall of the Ming empire and the rise of the Qing dynasty , ' The research focuses on three main characters: Martino Martini, a Jesuit from what would become Italy; Johann Adam Schall von Bell, from today’s Germany; and Domingo Navarrete, a Spaniard.. . . But if there were a thread that tied the three together, it is their role as “diplomats for the church” because much of Europe at the time was obsessed with spreading Christianity worldwide. Schindler said China played an exciting role in the imagination of European Christians, who recognised that the country had a huge cultural impact and that, if someone like a Chinese emperor became a Christian, it would create a domino effect across the region.' back

Matt McGrath, COP27: Sharp rise in fossil fuel industry delegates at climate summit, ' The number of delegates with links to fossil fuels at the UN climate summit has jumped 25% from the last meeting, analysis shared with the BBC shows. Campaign group Global Witness found more than 600 people at the talks in Egypt are linked to fossil fuels. That's more than the combined delegations from the 10 most climate-impacted countries. Around 35,000 people are expected to attend the COP27 summit in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.' back

Max Kozlov, Can mRNA vaccines transform the fight against Ebola?, ' It’s easy to tweak the proteins that the mRNA encodes if a new species emerges, or to include different strands of mRNA to induce protection against multiple filoviruses at once. mRNA vaccines also have the benefit of “real-life evidence” of their safety and effectiveness when it comes to protecting against COVID-19: they have been administered to more than five billion people, Pardi says.' back

Michelle Boorstein, In existential midterm races, Christian prophets become GOP surrogates, ' CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. — Lance Wallnau used to be a corporate marketer who privately believed that power lay in prophetic revelation. Then came 2015, and he began sharing a word from God: Donald Trump was “anointed.” . . . All over the country this year, figures like Wallnau, hailing from the right wing of prophetic and charismatic Christianity, have been appearing with candidates as part of a growing U.S. religious phenomenon that emphasizes faith healing, the idea that divine signs and wonders are everywhere, and spiritual warfare.' back

Miryam Naddaf, Climate change is costing trillions — and low-income countries are paying the price, ' Climate change has so far cost the global economy trillions of dollars, but low-income countries in tropical regions have borne the brunt of these losses, finds a study that analysed the economic consequences of heatwaves worldwide over a 20-year period. The research, published on 28 October in Science Advances1, estimates that the global economy lost between US$5 trillion and $29 trillion from 1992 to 2013, as a result of human-driven global warming. But the effect was worst in low-income tropical nations, leading to a 6.7% reduction in their national income on average, whereas high-income countries experienced only a 1.5% average decrease.' back

Mr Holmes - Wikipedia, Mr Holmes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Mr. Holmes is a 2015 mystery film directed by Bill Condon, based on Mitch Cullin's 2005 novel A Slight Trick of the Mind, and featuring the character Sherlock Holmes. The film stars Ian McKellen as Sherlock Holmes, Laura Linney as his housekeeper Mrs. Munro and Milo Parker as her son Roger. Set primarily during his retirement in Sussex, the film follows a 93-year-old Holmes who struggles to recall the details of his final case because his mind is slowly deteriorating.' back

N. Jordana-Mitjans et al, A Short Gamma-Ray Burst from a Protomagnetar Remnant, ' Here, we report the earliest discovery of bright thermal optical emission associated with short GRB 180618A with extended gamma-ray emission—with ultraviolet and optical multicolor observations starting as soon as 1.4 minutes post-burst. The spectrum is consistent with a fast-fading afterglow and emerging thermal optical emission 15 minutes post-burst, which fades abruptly and chromatically (flux density Fν ∝ t− α, α = 4.6 ± 0.3) just 35 minutes after the GRB. Our observations from gamma rays to optical wavelengths are consistent with a hot nebula expanding at relativistic speeds, powered by the plasma winds from a newborn, rapidly spinning and highly magnetized neutron star (i.e., a millisecond magnetar), whose rotational energy is released at a rate Lth ∝ t−(2.22±0.14) to reheat the unbound merger-remnant material. These results suggest that such neutron stars can survive the collapse to a black hole on timescales much larger than a few hundred milliseconds after the merger and power the GRB itself through accretion. Bright thermal optical counterparts to binary merger gravitational wave sources may be common in future wide-field fast-cadence sky surveys. back

Noah Gallagher Shannon, What Does Sustainable Living Look Like? Maybe Like Uruguay, back

Sacha Jenkins (2022), Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues, ' “Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues” offers an intimate and revealing look at the world-changing musician, presented through a lens of archival footage and never-before-heard home recordings and personal conversations. This definitive documentary, directed by Sacha Jenkins, honours Armstrong's legacy as a founding father of jazz, one of the first internationally known and beloved stars, and a cultural ambassador of the United States. The film shows how Armstrong’s own life spans the shift from the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement, and how he became a lightning rod figure in that turbulent era. back

Sammati Verma, Australia can’t blame criminals and fraudsters for migration crisis, ' But nebulous talk of criminal syndicates risks disappearing and dehumanising the hundreds of thousands of people caught up in the maelstrom of our migration regime. . . . In reality, the most serious problems facing the migration system are internal to it, not the result of nefarious foreign interference. Over the past 20 years, both Labor and Liberal governments have fundamentally re-geared Australia’s migration program towards temporary and employer-sponsored migration. . . . What’s more, successive governments have shifted the focus of the migration program towards “enforcement” activities and away from actually facilitating migration.' back

Stockholm Resilience Center, The nine planetary boundaries, ' Founded in 2007 A joint initiative between Stockholm University and the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics at The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Approximately 140 members of staff The mission of the centre is to advance research for governance and management of social-ecological systems to secure ecosystem services for human well-being and resilience for long-term sustainability ' back

What a Wonderful World - Wikipedia, What a Wonderful World - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' "What a Wonderful World" is a song written by Bob Thiele (as "George Douglas") and George David Weiss. It was first recorded by Louis Armstrong and released in 1967 as a single. It topped the pop chart in the United Kingdom,[1] but performed poorly in the United States because Larry Newton, the president of ABC Records, disliked the song and refused to promote it. After it was heard in the film Good Morning, Vietnam, it was reissued as a single in 1988, and rose to number 32 on the Billboard Hot 100.[2] Armstrong's recording was inducted to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.' back

Wright, Nyberg & Bowden, A technologically advanced society is choosing to destroy itself. It’s both fascinating and horrifying to watch, ' We term this all-consuming ideology the “fossil fuel hegemony”. It asserts that corporate capitalism based on fossil energy is a natural state of being, one that’s beyond challenge. The concept of “hegemony” was developed by the Italian intellectual Antonio Gramsci. In the 1920s, Gramsci sought to explain how dominant classes maintained their power beyond the use of force and coercion. He argued hegemony involved a continuous process of winning the consent of key actors in society such as industrialists, the media, and religious and educational institutions, to form a ruling bloc. Civil society would thus accept the prevailing order, dampening any threat of revolution.' back